


The Brave Ones

by wowbright



Series: Glee Season 5 episode reactions [13]
Category: Glee, The Brave One
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Christianity, Episode: s05e15 Bash, F/M, Frontier Justice, Gay Bashing, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hate Crimes, Hunters & Hunting, M/M, Martial Arts, Minor Character Death, Moral Ambiguity, Moral Dilemmas, Revenge, Self-Defense, Vigilante
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-21
Updated: 2014-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-20 06:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1500119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wowbright/pseuds/wowbright
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a homophobic assault, Kurt tries to make New York City a safer place all on his own. Blaine's left on the sidelines, wondering what's happening to their relationship. Meanwhile, Sam seeks justice in a different way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After 5.15 "Bash" aired, I posted [this](http://wowbright.tumblr.com/post/82148562949/so-now-im-wondering-if-kurt-is-going-to-go-all) on tumblr. No one ran with it, so I did. Loosely based on the 2007 Neil Jordan movie _The Brave One_ with Jodie Foster and Terrence Howard. Emphasis on "loosely."
> 
>  **This fic is not pretty. Heed the warnings and tags.** About the only happy thing I can say about it is that Kurt and Blaine don't break up. [Message me](http://wowbright.tumblr.com/askme) if you have questions.

Kurt’s not even out of the hospital when he starts looking up self-defense classes on his phone. He finds a lot of them. He asks his night doctor if the restriction on physical activity following his concussion means that he has to wait to sign up.

She looks at him sadly. “Well,” she says finally. “You can go and observe, but you shouldn’t participate until you come back for your follow-up and get the all clear. If you get another concussion before this one heals, it could kill you."

“How long is that going to take?” he says.

“It’s different with everybody.”

“I’m sure you’re legally obligated to say that, but never having gone to medical school, I have no idea what that means. Are we talking two days or two weeks?”

“More like two months,” she says. “Maybe longer. If you’re lucky, maybe shorter.”

He has the overwhelming urge to punch something. Not her. Just … something. Even though it would be stupid to. Even though he still has bruises on his fists.

*

The detective comes in after Kurt wakes up. Blaine and Sam are in the room, Blaine holding Kurt’s hand and Sam in the corner reading on his phone.

The detective asks if Kurt wants privacy for the interview, and Kurt almost laughs.

Of course Kurt wants to do this by himself.  He doesn’t want Blaine to hear any of it – to know the names they called him or that they laughed when they hit him, to know that the man he saved ran away to let him fend for himself. He doesn’t want to add to the pain already evident in Blaine’s face.

But then he looks up at Blaine and sees panic in his fiance’s eyes. He realizes that Blaine’s not ready to leave his side, and that asking him to would cause more pain than letting him hear what happened.

So he asks Blaine to stay. And Sam, too – because Blaine will need the support of his best friend.

Of course, as the detective asks her questions, Kurt realizes that he can’t describe all that much – not much that’s helpful anyway.  He tell her about their voices and the feeling of their fists and the weight of the brick against his back.

“What did they look like?” the detective asks.

“They were white,” Kurt finally says,  and remembers that Blaine often passes for white and adds, “or at least, they looked white. To me.”

The detective gives him a wary look. Height? Facial hair? Accent? He remembers their faces, but he can’t come up with the words to describe them. “A beard,” he says, even though that’s not quite the word he’s looking for. There’s a more specific word, but he can’t remember what it is. “And the other guy had a – a thing on top of his head. That covered his hair.”

“A bandana? A do-rag?” the officer says.

“No, a … um,” he looks at Blaine for help. “Like a baseball cap. But different.”

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says. “You’re the one who taught me the names of all the different kinds of hats.”

The detective changes her line of questioning. He tells her about the car. No … It was a pickup truck. Gray, maybe? Or blue? It’s hard to say. It was so dark.

“Did you notice the license plate?” the detective asks.

Kurt can’t remember if he did. He hopes he had the sense to look at it, to memorize its number. But he can’t see it. All he can picture is a rectangle of yellow light above the bumper that’s interrupted with a pattern of dark lines. “I’m pretty sure it was New York. It was yellow.”

“Not New Jersey?” she asks.

He shrugs. “Is New Jersey yellow?”

She nods.

A frisson of anger shoots through his chest. “But that should be illegal. They’re right next door.”

She doesn’t smile. “It would make my investigations a lot easier.”

When the interview is over, she hands each of them copies of her card. “Let me know if you think of anything else, or if you have any questions.”

Blaine clears his throat. “I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“Is it – you think they’re the same guys that hurt Russ?”

She looks at Blaine vacantly. “Russ?”

“I can’t remember his last name. He got bashed on Bleecker Street a few weeks ago. He’s in a coma now.”

She nods in recognition. “I can’t talk about that aspect of the investigation until we have more information.”

“But the pickup truck, and it was two guys –”

She sighs. “There are a lot of pickup trucks and a lot of white men in the state of New York. A lot of jerks, too. These kinds of crimes tend to happen in waves. So maybe it’s the same guys. Maybe it’s not.” She looks at Kurt. “Can we keep your clothes for a while in case forensics can use them?”

“What for?”

“Hair, blood. DNA. I can’t promise anything, but –”

Kurt doesn’t wait for her to finish. He’s only heard of DNA being used in two kinds of cases. He shifts on the bed, scanning his seat and thighs for pain – but everything hurts so much, he just can’t tell. So he asks: “Did they rape me?”

The detective goes pale. “No. Sorry, no. There’s no indication that – No. We look for DNA in other crimes, too.”

Kurt swallows. He’s not sure he buys it, but he can ask the doctor later when Blaine’s not around. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?”

“You can have my clothes.”

*

Kurt starts going along with Rachel to her self-defense classes at the JCC. It’s mostly women and a few gay men. Most of the other students look at him with fear in their eyes, seeing reflections of their worst nightmares come to life in the cuts and bruises on his skin.

But there are a couple of guys who look at him with a cocky sort of confidence, like they’re sure they’ll never end up looking like him because they were smart enough to sign up for lessons before anything bad happened.

Kurt should maybe hate that, but he knows what it’s like to be them; sometimes telling yourself, “It can’t happen to me,” is the only way you can get yourself to leave the house.

He’ll still help them if he one day finds them getting beaten up in an alley somewhere.

*

He’s not allowed to join in the class exercises, but he practices what he can on his own when no one’s in the loft. He gets out his sai swords and doesn’t twirl them. He jabs them in the air, swings them fast, sends them flying. He imagines scenarios where he cripples but doesn’t kill: slicing off an ear, stabbing a hand, piercing the flesh between armpit and heart.

He loops a rope over the rafters and ties Bruce the Headless Pillow to it. He whacks Bruce with umbrellas, kicks him with his Fluevogs, pummels him with his bookbag. Bruce swings with each punch, dances and skitters through the air in erratic patterns. It’s good practice for striking moving objects, though Kurt should probably practice pummeling something the weight of a human, too. So he finds an old duffel sack, lines it with garbage bags, and fills it with sidewalk sand from the hardware store. He hides it under his bed when he’s not using it.

When the bruises fade from his hands, he hits the duffel bag directly.

The moment of contact between his fist and the bag is gratifying, addictive. Kurt pictures the faces of those cowards in the alley as he punches (though he’s not sure how accurate his memory is, because sometimes they shift and surge into something else, and it’s suddenly Sebastian or Puck or Mr. Schuester he’s beating to a bloody pulp – and he doesn’t want to think about why it’s those faces that show up. So he doesn’t. He just keeps hitting.)

*

On Kurt’s third visit to the class, Rachel gets paired up with one of the cocky guys at the JCC – Cameron, a boy around their age who’s six-foot-plus with flaming red hair and a sinewy body of muscle. He puts her in a chokehold and she flips him over onto his back with a loud _thwap_ against the mat.

He’s pale when he stands up, and shaking. The teacher asks if he’s okay. “Yeah, yeah. I’m fine,” he says. The teacher doesn’t buy it, starts talking to him about how being on the ground doesn’t mean defeat. She tells Cameron that he did a great job of protecting his head and hands during the fall, and that there are still plenty of things you can do to defend yourself once you’ve hit the ground – in fact, it can be an advantageous position because you don’t have to worry about losing your balance.

“Yeah, of course,” Cameron says, nodding too fast. “I just need some sugar is all. Forgot to have lunch today. I’m gonna get a soda.” He walks out the room and Kurt follows him by ten paces. Cameron’s too shaken to notice – a bad sign. The first thing the teacher reminds them every week is how awareness of your surroundings is the most important thing.

Cameron walks past the soda machine and straight into the men’s room. By the time Kurt catches up with him, he can hear the boy retching in one of the stalls.

Kurt leans by the sink and waits. The toilet flushes. Cameron doesn’t come out.

“She’s right, you know,” Kurt says. “Getting thrown isn’t the worst thing that can happen.”

Cameron steps out of the stall, doesn’t look at Kurt. He walks to the sink and splashes water on his face, scrubbing at his skin like he’s trying to erase it.

He gives up after a minute, turns the water off.

“What happened to you?” he says, eying Kurt’s reflection in the mirror until Kurt eyes him back. Cameron turns away, grabbing paper towels from the dispenser and blotting them against his skin.

“Exactly what you think happened to me,” Kurt says.

Cameron tosses the towels in the trash. “New York was supposed to be safer,” he grumbles.

“I thought so, too.”

“I don’t want to end up like you.”

“It’s not so bad. The other guy they were after got away, and that’s because I was there. So …” Kurt shrugs.

“Your boyfriend?” Cameron says.

“No. I don’t know who he was. He was just some guy in an alley. They were bashing him and it made me mad, so I –”

“Wait. You got beat up on purpose?”

“I wouldn’t put it that way.”

“You’re crazy.”

“I take that to mean you don’t want to join my group of highly trained queer vigilantes?”

Cameron looks at Kurt’s face for the first time this afternoon. “I don’t mean to be a douchebag, but obviously you’re not that well-trained if that happened to you.”

Kurt laughs. He’s not sure why – but he’s not sure why he does a lot of things these days. For example, saying what he just said. “I’m working on the training. Have to wait for the swelling in my brain to go down first, though. But I’m tired of them having the upper hand. I’m tired of taking the moral high ground.”

*

There’s a weight on Kurt’s chest. A man is trying to pin him down, his knee pressing against Kurt’s sternum.

It’s the guy from that night – the one with a beard. But it’s okay. Everything’s okay. He learned what to do in Rachel’s class at the JCC – and he will, as soon as he’s done studying the guy’s face and thinking of words to describe him other than _cowardly_ and _smells like an alcoholic._ Kurt gathers his strength and stares: Round face. Horseshoe mustache. Goatee. Beady eyes and large, flat ears. Teardrop nose.

“What’re you looking at, faggot?” the guy says.

“A sad excuse for a human being,” Kurt answers as he makes his move, flipping the guy over with a sudden jerk.

“Kurt!”

“How the fuck do you know my name? You’re not allowed to say my name, you –” As Kurt shouts, everything in front of his eyes changes. It’s still dark and shadowy, but the shafts of dim light go in different directions than they did before, and the pavement under him is soft, and the putrid dumpster smell is replaced by the smell of –

That’s Blaine’s hand on his arm, Blaine’s voice in his ear.

Kurt blinks again and his bedroom falls into place around them. Those are his curtains, and his window. These are his own blankets binding him to the bed. And inside his chest, that’s his heart beating, pounding like a prisoner against the bars of his ribcage.

He reaches out for Blaine, but he doesn’t know – is it okay to touch him? Did Kurt, in his sleep, did he – “Did I hurt you?”

Blaine shakes his head. “No. You just kind of … pushed me off you. Woke me up. I’m okay, though. How about you?”

“I remembered what he looked like. What one of them looked like, anyway.”

“Oh.” Blaine doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Maybe you should call the detective.”

Kurt jumps out of bed and pulls a notepad out of his satchel. He turns on his desklamp and begins writing down the descriptors he thought of in his sleep. But he can’t write them fast enough. By the time he has the last one down, the picture of his attacker has faded from his memory. “I’ll call her tomorrow,” he says.

“You want to talk about it?” Blaine’s sitting up now in the bed, watching Kurt expectantly.

“No.”

“You want me to make you some warm milk?”

“N–” Kurt’s about to say _no, I can make it myself, go back to sleep._ But it occurs to him that Blaine may need to do this for his own peace of mind as much as Kurt’s. “If you want to. I don’t want to keep you up, though, if you think you can get back to sleep.”

“I’d like to,” Blaine says, scurrying out from under the covers and giving Kurt’s shoulder the lightest squeeze before he heads to the kitchen.

Kurt watches Blaine protectively as he falls back asleep. He thinks about the faceless boys who hurt Blaine and his Sadie Hawkins date years ago, wonders why he never thought to take revenge on them until this moment.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Sam’s gone hunting with his dad almost every year since he was eight. He first shot a rifle at 10. He added a handgun to his arsenal a short while later. Sam’s father said he needed to learn because if you’re out in the woods and a cougar or bear comes after you, a rifle’s not always the easiest weapon to use.

Not that his dad actually let Sam carry a handgun when they were hunting. His handling was limited to going out to a field a few times a year to shoot bottles. His dad was the one who carried it when they went hunting, although Sam knew where it was and how to pull the safety in case the worst happened when they were in the woods and his dad wasn’t in any condition to protect him from predators. His dad taught Sam all of this this matter-of-factly, like death was the flipside of life and nothing to get too worked up about, so it never bothered Sam.

Maybe because Sam’s father was always so matter-of-fact about these things, Sam never became particularly obsessed with guns or with killing. He hunted to learn where his food came from, and because the animals they killed in the wild and brought home to eat had better lives than the meat they could buy in the grocery store. In that way, hunting could be said to relieve suffering.

Still, Sam didn’t particularly enjoy killing. He didn’t dislike it, either.  It just was what it was – something people had to do to survive.  It was better to take it into his own hands than to leave someone else to do the dirty work.

*

Sam steps into the hospital room after Blaine, ready to catch him in case seeing Kurt makes him collapse.

But Blaine stands steady. A strange aura of calmness falls on all of them as they enter the room, especially compared to the panic in the waiting room. It reminds Sam of walking into a church on Ash Wednesday: Everything is suddenly in perspective. Death is close, but it hasn’t conquered.

Still, it bothers Sam to see Kurt so still. Kurt’s one of the most vibrant people Sam has ever known.  He’s liked that about Kurt from the moment they first met, even if he’s had trouble understanding anything else about what made Kurt tick.

Sam tries to wake Kurt up until Mercedes tells him to stop. She’s right, of course. Sam wants Kurt awake for his own sake, not for Kurt’s. That’s not fair.  Kurt needs to rest.

But that’s not fair either. It’s not even midnight. Kurt hardly ever goes to bed before midnight unless Blaine lures him there.

Sam has a sudden, distinct memory of sitting at the dinner table one evening the year he stayed with Kurt and Finn’s family. Kurt and his father had made the meal and the rest of them were ooh-ing and ah-ing over how good it was. Kurt teased Finn about the time he made chocolate chip cookies and forgot the salt, but Finn didn’t get upset – he seemed to think it was even funnier than Kurt did, the way he laughed about it nonstop for five minutes. Sam felt so light inside, and Burt and Carole just smiled at the two boys like they were the best things on earth.

The memory is followed by another one – the flash of a cell phone screen, a strained voice on the other end: “Finn’s gone.” The sudden inability to breathe.

“I want to kill whoever did this to him,” Sam finds himself saying.

Mercedes says that Sam doesn’t really mean that, but she’s wrong. Death is the flipside of life, and sometimes it’s necessary.

 

*

Blaine is strong for the police interview in Kurt’s hospital room, and strong on the way home. But Sam knows it won’t last long.

And it doesn’t.

“I should have been there, Sam. I should have – I would have kept him from trying to fight them, I would have –”

“You know he would have gone in there anyway.” Sam says it to make Blaine feel better, but does the opposite. Blaine starts bawling, and Sam can’t hug him hard enough to staunch the tears.

“I know he would have. Why does he have to do that? Why does he have to be so brave? And why can’t I – I should be _proud_ of him, Sam. But I feel so angry, and not only at the people who beat him up, and –”

Sam’s not sure what to say. He keeps thinking about Han Solo and what a stubborn bastard he is, how he keeps doing heroic things even at the risk of breaking Princess Leia’s heart – and also how Princess Leia wouldn’t love him half as much if he wasn’t that way.

But he’s not sure about bringing up _Star Wars_ right now. Maybe he’ll say it in the morning, when Blaine’s calmer.

After Blaine falls asleep, Sam goes downstairs and puts _Return of the Jedi_ in the DVD player. He skips to the scene where Princess Leia strangles Jabba the Hutt to death, then watches it on silent over and over again.

*

Sam has never met Russ – the Bushwick neighbor’s friend who was beaten into a coma just because he was gay.  But he stops by the vigil site every day and says a prayer for him. He’s a little out of practice at praying, but not because he ever stopped believing that God could hear him. It’s just that he realized that God could hear him all the time, that he knew what was worrying Sam before Sam ever did.

Still, it helps sometimes to talk things out. Sam asks God to bring comfort to Russ and his friends, and to Blaine and to Kurt even if they don’t really believe in him, and to bring the gay bashers to justice.

He tells God that he can’t see anything wrong with Princess Leia killing Jabba the Hutt, and he’s having trouble seeing anything wrong with wanting to kill the people who left Russ and Kurt for dead.

The Bible says, “You shall not murder.” But it also says, “The wicked will be swept away. The righteous will be glad when they are avenged, when they bathe their feet in the blood of the wicked. Then men will say, ‘Surely the righteous still are rewarded; surely there is a God who judges the earth.’"

*

After Russ wakes up and starts talking again, Sam chips in with the rest of his Lima friends to buy a new phone for him. (The old one got smashed in the attack.) They don’t visit him in person – he’s too tired for many visitors – but he sends them a thank you text and selfie from his hospital room. He’s wearing a Wonder Woman t-shirt and surrounded by flowers.

Sam can’t wait to meet him.

*

Sam and Mercedes are in her living room having a _Facts of Life_ marathon. Blaine’s over at Kurt’s, which is nice because that means Sam can kiss Mercedes to his heart’s content without feeling like he’s being rude to his best friend.

They’re taking a break from kissing when the phone rings. It’s Blaine, so of course Sam picks up.

“Sam?” Blaine’s voice is shaking on the other end of the line.

“Yeah? What’s wrong? Is Kurt okay?” Sam starts, because Blaine never sounds this bad when he’s only worried about himself.

“It’s Russ. He threw a blood clot. He’s –” Blaine doesn’t finish the sentence, just starts sobbing. Sam hears Kurt’s voice in the background, trying to soothe Blaine.

“Blaine? Talk to me. Breathe, okay?” Sam says.

Mercedes look at Sam worriedly. “What’s going on?” she whispers.

“I don’t know,” Sam mouths back. _Something bad,_ he wants to say, but he’s worried that will curse it.

There’s shuffling in the background and then Kurt’s voice again, this time right in Sam’s ear. “Hi Sam,” he says. His voice is thin, like there’s hardly any air behind it. The last time Sam heard Kurt talk like that was right before he transferred to Dalton. It’s a terrible sound. “Russ died.”

Blaine sobs again.

“I’m coming over,” Sam says. He looks at Mercedes, who still doesn’t know what happened. But from the look in her eyes, he can see that she wants to be there for them too. “Mercedes and I are coming over.”

And then he remembers how Kurt is about space, and how much he hates to be around people sometimes when he’s in pain. “I mean, if it’s okay,” Sam adds.

“Yeah,” Kurt sighs. “Blaine needs you.”

“We won’t be bothering you?”

There’s a long pause. Kurt sounds like he’s sniffling. “No. It’s fine.”

*

Sam was going to put the money from his most recent modeling contract in a savings account, but he has more important things to do.

He goes to Walmart to buy a handgun, only to discover that they don’t have any because they’re pretty much illegal in New York state.

Usually, Sam would think that was a good thing. Not today. Still, he’s seen enough movies to know that where there’s money, there’s a way. So he talks to some of the models from that apartment he almost moved into and asks them where they got their drugs. He figures if drugs and firearms are both illegal, the folks who deal in them probably know each other.

The semiautomatic handgun with magazines, plus an air pistol for practice, costs $1,500. It’s a ridiculous price, and he doesn’t want to think about where the money is going. So he doesn’t. He focuses on the good he needs to do. 

Sam uses the air pistol to get used to holding a gun again, to sharpen his aim. It doesn’t have the kickback of a real handgun, but it’s better than nothing. When the residents of the Bushwick loft are at class, Sam goes over to their building and tapes up a target on the wall at the end of the long hallway outside their door. No one ever goes down to that end of the hall – and even if they did, they wouldn’t notice a bit of chipped brickwork anyway, the building is so old. He thinks of Russ and Kurt as he pulls the trigger. He pretends the target centers are the beating hearts of the men who hurt them.

He’s disappointed to find that the bullseyes don’t bleed.

*

Sam feels guilty not telling Mercedes about the guns since he’s keeping them under her roof. When he’s not wearing them, he stores them in a small safe hidden in a cardboard box labeled “modeling contracts”. He can get to them quickly if he needs to, but he’s not worried about her or Blaine finding them.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's where it starts getting gruesome.

The day of Russ’ memorial service, Kurt reaches into his makeup kit for the concealer. He hasn’t been using it much lately – he likes the scars forming on his face – but today isn’t the day to show them off.

He dabs a clean swab in the pot and lifts it to his face. And that’s when he realizes: the scar on his cheek is almost completely gone. If he squints at the bathroom mirror, he can see the outline of where it used to be – but only because he knows where to look.

He mutters angry words under his breath. His scars were supposed to be a sign of his victory over those cowards in the alley, visible proof that he’d saved the life of another man.

And now Kurt might not even have those.

Maybe it’s fair. Russ doesn’t get to wear his scars like a trophy. Dead men never do.

Here one moment and gone the next. Just like Finn.

Kurt has the urge to kick something. He swings his foot at the trashcan and it goes clanging on its side, a few cotton balls and wrapped tampons falling to the floor like innards. It’s not very satisfying, but it will have to do for now.

* * *

Sam brings his gun to the memorial service. There are rumors that folks from the Westboro Baptist Church will be there, and even though those people aren’t _technically_ violent, they could make people do something stupid.

But when he arrives, there are plenty of police to keep an eye on the haters.

And Sam realizes this isn’t where he’s needed. Not in broad daylight with the cops on high alert.

No. He needs to go looking for trouble where it happens: at night in alleys and under bridges.

He doesn’t know if he’s ready for that. He played at being superhero in high school, but it hardly counts as experience, does it? Back then, he knew the names and faces of his enemies, knew where their base was, and knew that – even though they were awful people – they weren’t trying to kill anyone.

It was all a game compared to this.

That night, Sam does what the Dark Knight would do: detective work. He makes a map of every recent reported bashing, noting the times and days of the week, the number of victims and descriptions of the attackers. They don’t all appear to be done by the same people, but several of them report two white guys jumping out of a pickup truck in parts of Manhattan that are supposed to be safe.

Sam wishes he could talk to his best friend about this, but Blaine can’t know what he’s planning. At least Batman had Alfred.

Sam has nobody.

* * *

Kurt gets the green light for contact sports two days after Russ’ memorial service.

He starts participating in the class at the JCC, and it’s a start – but everyone there treats him with kid gloves. As if, having seen him broken, they’ve come to the conclusion that he must be more fragile than they are. The thought must reassure them when they’re out on the street at night.

He learns how to fall and how to duck a (half-hearted) punch and how to loosen himself from someone’s (weak) grip.

He needs to learn more.

Kurt realizes that the thing he wants to learn is not so much _self-defense_ as _justified offense._ The phrase comes to him just after he wakes up from a nightmare, and as soon as it does – he giggles with relief.

So he signs up for kickboxing and bōjutsu. He gets a few strange looks from the other students the first few classes – the straight boys who look they have something to prove. But the sensei treats him like everybody else, and soon his classmates do, too. They don’t hold back with him – not because they want to beat the gay out of him – but because they don’t hold back with anybody.

When he hits the mat, he rolls back up and keeps going. Sometimes he wins. Sometimes he loses. As the months go by, he wins more often.

He comes home covered in bruises. He undresses in front of the mirror, counts them like trophies.

Blaine doesn’t like any of it. Kurt knows this, even though Blaine won’t say it directly. Instead he says, “I’m worried about you getting hurt again, Kurt.”

Kurt pulls Blaine close, because that’s what Blaine needs when he worries. “I know, sweetheart. But we’re not trying to kill each other in our classes. And doing this – it helps me feel safer.”

“I know,” Blaine sighs, burrows his face into Kurt’s chest. “I don’t know why I’m being stupid about this. You never got upset about me boxing. I guess –” He cuts himself off suddenly.

“What is it, Blaine?”

Blaine lifts his head, looks Kurt in the eye. “I’m not worried so much about you getting hurt in class as I am about you trying to help someone in an alley by yourself. Like last time.”

Kurt doesn’t answer. He should say, _It’s okay, I won’t do it again.  I’ll call the police_

_next time._ But he doesn’t want to lie to Blaine. Instead, he says, “I don’t want to worry you.”

“I know.”

* * *

Mercedes’ house becomes infested with rats. Well, maybe not _infested_. That all depends on how many rats it takes to qualify as an infestation.

Sam is the first to spot one. He’s bringing the garbage out to the curb when a big fat one scurries out from the hole that’s been chewed in the bottom of the plastic trashcan. It’s kind of cute, actually, with pretty gray-brown fur and a long pink tail like a fat earthworm. It reminds him of the pet rats he used to have when he was younger, and wonders if maybe he should leave food out for it so it doesn’t have to eat through the trashcan.

A couple weeks later, Sam wakes up to Mercedes shrieking in the kitchen. “What was –?” Blaine says groggily.  But Sam is too wired to answer. He grabs the box with the guns in it and starts down the stairs.

“Mercedes?” he shouts.

“There’s a rat!” she shouts back.

_Oh. That’s all._ He sets the box down in the living room. When he gets to the kitchen, he can see Mercedes is practically hyperventilating. He reaches out for her shoulder. “Hey, it’s okay.”

“It’s _not_ okay, Sam! I opened the cupboard to get my cereal and there was a rat in there. This big.” She holds her hands about a foot apart. His skepticism must show in his face, because she follows it with, “I am not exaggerating, Sam Evans. It had a long tail.”

Sam looks into the cupboard. The cereal boxes are trashed, as is the bag of Wonder Bread. There are droppings everywhere, and the tangy scent of rodent urine.  He pushes the boxes aside, careful not to touch the poop, and finds a large hole chewed out the back of the cupboard. “Well,” he says. “We should definitely plug up the hole.”

Mercedes shivers.

“ _I’ll_ plug up the hole. I don’t have to work today, anyway.”

Sam cleans out the cabinet, and plugs the hole with steel wall and pieces of scrap wood. Blaine disinfects the whole thing when Sam’s done.

But the rats keep coming back, and Sam starts losing his sympathy for them. He knows they’re just doing what they need to survive – but at the same time, they’re destroying the household’s food, and who knows what apocalyptic plague they might be carrying. The landlord’s solution is to give them a stack of glue traps.

“We are not using glue traps,” Sam says. “That’s a terrible way to die. They starve to death. They can be stuck in a trap for days.”

“Well, what’s your solution?”  Mercedes counters. “That we make them our pets?”

“Do you trust me?” Sam says.

“That’s a loaded question.”

He tells her about the BB gun. She knows that he hunts, so she doesn’t act surprised that he owns one. But she does act surprised that he brought it to New York.

He shrugs. “Well,” he says. “I figured if the modeling didn’t work out, occasionally I’d have to hunt squirrels for dinner in Central Park.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, Sam.”

“Really?”

She keeps insisting that shooting rats with a BB gun is weird. But when he describes their other options, she gives in. “Just make sure no one sees you,” she says. “I don’t want anyone calling the cops on you.”

He buys a metal cabinet to store their dry goods, but they keep bait out in the basement. Sam sits down there for long hours, listening to _Star Wars_ podfics on his phone and waiting for the rats to arrive.

They do, one by one. He shoots them, one by one.

That doesn’t always mean it’s a clean kill, though. He’s out of practice, and his specialty was never small game. He misses the first one three times before hitting it in the back leg. The poor thing lets out a blood-curdling shriek as it tries to drag itself across the floor on its front paws, dragging a trail of blood behind it.

Sam clenches his jaw, tries not to tear up. “I’m sorry, little guy. I know you didn’t mean any harm. But you were hurting us.” He shoots twice more, this time in the head, and the rat seizes against the floor, its little paws scratching against concrete for a few seconds before it goes still.

It’s the first time he’s killed something without eating it. He knows this doesn’t make him like a trophy hunter (he never had any respect for them), or people who raise animals for fur. He _needed_ to do it. It was the best solution for the predicament they were in. Later – when Jesus comes back and the lion sits down with the lamb – he won’t have to kill anymore. But for now, it’s his duty.

That doesn’t keep him from crying, anyway.

A lot of responsibility comes with killing things. Sam takes it seriously, burying the rat in their postage stamp of a backyard and saying a little prayer of apology.  Mercedes asks why he doesn’t put it in the garbage – it would be a lot less work, and the smell might warn other rats away.

“Um … rats will eat dead rats, actually,” Sam says. “They won’t kill each other, but if they’re already dead –”

“OK, nevermind. I guess I didn’t actually want to know.”

“Anyway, this is more respectful. If we have to kill them, you know. They came from nature. We should let them go back where they belong.”

“Huh. I never really thought of rats that way.” Light sparkles in Mercedes eyes. “You help me see things in a new way. I like that about you.”

After that, Mercedes and Blaine sometimes join Sam out in the backyard for his rat funerals. He digs a new hole for each of them, three feet under the ground in a neat little row. They bow their heads in silence and sometimes Sam says a little prayer like this one: “Dear God, I know there’s not supposed to be heaven for animals, but that doesn’t make any sense, so please guide this rat to a better place without BB guns and glue traps, because he really wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. And maybe if I get to heaven one day too, let me apologize to him in person. Thanks. Amen.”

Sam starts to wonder if he has such a hard time killing rats, is he really ready to kill the guys who hurt Kurt? On the one hand, it shouldn’t be hard to kill those guys, because they hurt people on purpose – not like the rats, who just do it as a side effect of existing. Also, they killed Russ. And maybe they’ve killed other people, too. Jesus said to turn the other cheek when someone punches you, but he didn’t say you should let people terrorize your friends and bash their heads in.

On the other hand: Rats can’t change, but people can. The apostle Paul went around killing Christians before he saw how bad he was and repented. And then he became the biggest Christian of them all. So maybe the guys who hurt Kurt could change, too. Maybe they’d understand that what they did was wrong, and spend the rest of their lives trying to make the world a safer place for gays. Of course it wouldn’t make up for what they’d done, but they’d still be doing a lot better for the world by being alive than by being dead.

Sam’s not naive, though. He knows that some people are irredeemable. Darth Vader might have repented, but the Emperor never did. And when Sisera was hunting the Israelites, Jael did the right thing by driving a nail through his head.

* * *

Over and over for the past few days, the same pattern of seven letters and numbers keeps going through Kurt’s head. He doesn’t think much of it at first – his mind often goes to weird places when he’s preoccupied, repeating phrases or tunes or symbols to make up for the lack of patternicity and consequence in the real world. He likes the number 214 a lot, and the number three – and lots of other numbers seem to hold magic in them, even if he doesn’t understand them on the same level that Brittany does.

But the numbers in this pattern are new, and it’s not until the third day ( _three! see! it is a magic number!_ ) that Kurt realizes what the pattern resembles: a New York license plate number.

He calls up the detective and tells her: J405763.

“Are you sure?” she says. “It’s been a long time.”

“No,” he says. “I’m not sure. But I don’t know why else it would be going through my head.”

He gets a call back from her a few days later. The number wasn’t a lead – it’s registered to a different kind of car, nothing that resembles a pickup truck at all.

“Maybe someone switched it,” he says, because his faith in his memory has grown stronger in the interval. “Stole the license plate and put it on the pickup.”

“We have no record of that. I’m sorry, Mr. Hummel.”

He bites his lip. “Maybe the numbers are in the wrong order. Maybe you could compare them to the license plate from when Russ got attacked?”

“None of the witnesses took down the license plate number in that case.”

“But our cases are connected, aren’t they?”

“The physical evidence would suggest –” she says, then pauses. “It’s likely.”

“Were you ever planning to tell me this?”

“Mr. Hummel, believe me, you have all my sympathy, but our procedures –”

“You should have found them by now. You have their DNA. You should have found them.”

“It’s more complicated that that. We don’t keep the DNA of every New York City resident on file.”

“Wait – so you’re sure they live in the city? Whoever did this?”

“Look, there’s only so much I can share with you about an ongoing investigation. I’d love to tell you more, I really would, but –”

“You can’t,” Kurt says coldly. “You can’t do anything. I know.”

* * *

Sam hears the license plate story (and the ensuing disappointment) through Blaine. He’s disappointed, too. Kurt never gets his numbers and letters mixed up the way that Sam does, and it’s just so unfair that even someone without dyslexia can get them wrong sometimes.

But a lot of wrong things have happened lately, and this one doesn’t take up more space in Sam’s brain than any of the others. Not until he’s going through his second wallet one night – the one with all his fake IDs from back when he used to be an underage stripper – looking for a good one to use at the liquor store down the street.

He stares at the drivers license and wonders: If they can make fake licenses out of plastic, why can’t they make them out of metal?

Sam shows up at the police station the next day looking for Kurt’s detective. He pictures it going like it does in the movies: a crowded, chaotic waiting room; a grumpy receptionist; an insistent hero. Finally the hero gets through, sees the detective, gives her the first solid lead she’s had in the case, and – after a few plot twists – justice is served.

Sam’s the hero of course, although he would never call himself that. At least not out loud. If he is a hero, he wants to think of himself more as the everyman kind, like Bruce Willis in _Unbreakable_ or Sheriff Grimes in _The Walking Dead_. Also, if this was a movie, the detective would end up as his love interest – which of course isn’t going to happen in real life, because Sam’s got Mercedes. He wonders, though, if the detective is going to end up falling for him anyway and he’ll have to let her down gently.

Maybe she’s a lesbian. That would be a good plot twist.

Of course, the actual scenario doesn’t end up playing out anything like he’s imagined.  There isn’t a waiting room, the receptionist is one of the most helpful people he’s met in New York, and also – Sam’s at the wrong police station.

The receptionist tells him he’s really better off calling anyway, because detectives’ schedules can be really erratic. And even though the receptionist says it nicely (well, nicely for New York), Sam feels really dumb. He should know that from TV. Most detectives don’t sit around at their desks all day waiting for everymen to show up to solve their cases for them.

 

He calls and leaves a message for the detective. He’s not sure what the protocol is for this kind of thing. He could say, “I think I have a lead on that gay-bashing case you’ve been working on.” But what if there’s a bad guy on the force who’s protecting the attackers?  What if the bad guy listens to the other officers’ voicemails, deleting them at the any hint of a breakthrough?

But if he just says, “Hi, this is Sam Evans. I’d like to talk to you” – well, that’s probably not going to get any results at all. She might think he’s just a bill collector something.

So he says, “Hi. I’m Sam Evans. A friend of Kurt Hummel’s? I was hoping we could talk about the case.”

He doesn’t hear back from her for a couple days, even though he calls back several times. He doesn’t recognize the number when she calls – it’s different from the one he’s been leaving messages at – and so when he picks up the phone he’s expecting a request for his modeling portfolio, not, “Mr. Evans, I can’t discuss details of an ongoing criminal investigation with members of the general public.”

“Oh,” he says, trying to push his brain out of modeling-zone and into detective-zone. It takes a second. “Yeah. No, of course. I’m not – I’m not the general public, though. You met me when you talked to Kurt in the hospital.”

A pause on her end. The shuffle of papers. “Oh. Yes. Well – I still can’t discuss the details of the case with you. If you have any information I might have missed –”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “It’s that.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It’s the license plates.”

A pause. “But I thought – you weren’t a witness to the crime. Were you?”

Sam shakes his head, then realizes she can’t see him. “No. I was just thinking – What if Kurt remembered the license plate number right, but the reason it didn’t pan out is because the plates were counterfeit?”

“That’s certainly … possible.”

“So, like, then you could find the guys who make the counterfeit plates and find out who they sold _that_ one to, and then you’d find your guys.”

A _long_ pause. “It’s not quite that simple.”

“But it’s worth a shot, right?”

“I seriously consider all plausible leads,” she says.

“Good,” Sam says, even though the number of ten-dollar words she used in that sentence makes his stomach knot up a little. A lot of times when people talk fancy like that, it means they’re just trying to get you to shut up.

“Did you have anything else for me, Mr. Evans?”

“No. That’s all.” _That’s all_. Saying those words is like watching all the balloons at a five-year-old’s birthday party deflate. Because wasn’t that supposed to be _everything?_ It’s a good lead, a solid lead. It was supposed to put Kurt’s attackers in jail.

* * *

Kurt doesn’t go looking for trouble – until he does.

A lot of the recent attacks have been in random places. But not all of them. Cowards aren’t very creative, so of course a lot of the attacks have taken place near gay bars, where men like him feel safest and let down their guard the most. So that’s where he heads.

He’s not in his best clothes, but they’re good enough that if he runs into someone who recognizes him, he’ll look like himself. They’re still in good enough taste it would be hard to mistake him for a straight man.

He doesn’t find trouble the first few times he goes out, but it’s not a waste of time. He learns the landscape, makes mental notes of things that could be used as weapons in a pinch: pieces of pipe, loose bricks, sewer grates, the overflowing contents of dumpsters.

A lot of men hit on him outside the bars. He accepts the compliments graciously, smiles and says he’s not interested, then moves on. He keeps his eye out for a gray pickup, and sometimes he sees one – but it’s never the one he wants.

Kurt patrols for hours some nights

He eventually hears a scream.

He runs toward it, scanning the sidewalks for a long length of old aluminum electrical pipe he spotted earlier next to one of the trash cans out on the curb. It won’t make a perfect bō – the weight of it is wrong – but it’s a good length at almost 5 feet, and the coolness of it feels soothing through his gloves.

When he gets to the alley, Kurt doesn’t see anything. But the noise is definitely coming from here.

Kurt doesn’t make the same mistake he did the last time. He doesn’t shout, doesn’t try to distract. He doesn’t say a word. The sounds are closer, punches and grunts and a man’s voice begging,  “Please don’t, I’ll do anything, I can get you money, just take me to an ATM, I –”

“We don’t want your money. We want people like you dead. Fucking queer.”

He sees it, twenty feet ahead: a turn in the alley where the building ends. That’s where they are.

He keeps his pace steady. A stray cat scurries silently across his path at the sound of the next blow. He needs to be like that cat, silent and invisible until he’s ready to be seen.

Around the corner are two men standing, two men piled on top of each other on the ground. At first, Kurt thinks that means two attackers and two victims, but then one of the men standing steps aside and Kurt sees that the man on top of the pile isn’t part of a _pile_ , he’s –

_Oh god._

“You like to take it up the ass, faggot? I’ll show you how to take it up the ass. I’ll give it to you so far up the ass you’ll never be able to shit again.”

A laugh, a different voice – coming from one of the men who’s still standing. “Never gonna be able to shit again anyway, because we’re going to kill you.”

“Do whatever you want, but please not – I have a family, I –”

No one notices Kurt until he sweeps the pipe six inches above the ground, knocking both of the standing men over at the ankles.

It’s chaos after that.

Kurt never thought this far, really. Not about the consequences of it. He’d thought about the blood and the relief, but he’d always imagined that he could get away with just maiming people a little to teach them a lesson.

But the men who fall get back up and there are three of them, and one of him, and the guy they were hurting is in no position to help – blood dripping from his forehead and his ass, and the waist of his shoved-down pants binding his thighs together.

So Kurt goes for their heads.

Kurt doesn’t remember the sound his own skull made when it cracked, so when he hears the first skull crack this time, he’s not quite prepared for the brutality of it. He’s not quite prepared for the blood, either, or the way that the man falls to the ground limp and seemingly lifeless (he can’t really be dead, can he? The pipe bent, it took some of the force, it’s only _aluminum)_ and he wants to stop, wants to stop and think and make sure that this is really what he’s supposed to be doing, that this is the only way –

But there are two others still fighting him, so he can’t.

So he keeps going, swings the bō again, and the other guys try to grab it and use it against him but apparently they’ve never had any practice. They’re just stupid thugs who look for people they can hurt with sheer brute strength and no intelligence or grace at all.

He keeps going for their heads, but his aim’s not exact and when he hits the next guy it’s with the blunt end of the pipe, right in the eye, and that – that’s really strange. There’s soft resistance, but not as much as Kurt would expect – almost as easy as driving a stake into garden soil that’s become hard-packed after drought, and it just keeps going, deeper and deeper until something solid interferes.

_The back of his skull,_ Kurt thinks, and with sudden horror he drops the pipe to the ground. The man falls with it, blood pouring from his eye and urine leaking out onto his trousers, his arms and legs convulsing, and Kurt should watch – he should have the courage to watch the consequences of his actions.

But the third guy is still moving – down on the ground, shuffling on his knees, but still a possible threat. Kurt doesn’t remember what he did to put him there – but there he is, sniffing and sobbing bloody tears, his left arm hanging limp like it’s not fully connected to his body anymore, and begging Kurt not to hurt him.

Kurt glances at the man they were hurting earlier, who’s managed to pull his pants back up to his waist and is up on his knees like he’s trying to stand up but can’t quite get there.

“Where’s your phone?” Kurt says to the rapist.

“My phone?”

“Yes. Your phone.”

The rapist gets it out of his coat pocket – only later will Kurt realize he was stupid to let the guy do that himself, he could have had a gun (although if he’d had a gun he probably would have pulled it out earlier, so maybe it wasn’t so stupid after all) – and holds it up for Kurt to see.

“Give it to me.”

The rapist does.

And then Kurt does what needs to be done. He breaks the remaining good hand of the rapist so he can’t try anything when Kurt looks away. He takes pictures of each thug as the rapist keeps pleading with him. Kurt blocks out the words, because if he listens he’ll get too angry, and then he would lose it and kill that son of a bitch, too.

He finds himself saying it out loud. The rapist shuts up.

*

Kurt  watches from across the street until the ambulances arrive. They load the rapist first, and Kurt wants to run back across the street, tell them that they’re doing it all wrong.

If the victim doesn’t survive this, it’s going to be Kurt’s own fault.

Kurt should have killed the rapist. He should have gotten him out of the way so that there would be no distraction, so that the medics could focus all their attention on saving the person who needs to be saved.

The truth hits him like a brick: Sometimes killing is the only right thing to do.

Well. No time for regrets. He’ll still make sure something good comes out of this.

Kurt wakes the rapist’s cell phone up and opens up the guy’s Facebook. It’s difficult with gloved hands, but he’s not stupid enough to get his fingerprints all over the screen. He loads the photos with the caption: “Went out tonight to fuck with some queers. Then I found out that this is what happens to gay bashers.”

He submits it to Gothamist.com for good measure before smashing the phone to pieces with the heel of his boot.

* * *

Sam memorizes J40-5763. It takes him a while – license plates and phone numbers have always been hard for him. But he makes up a story about two assassin droids who are trying to destroy C-3PO and R2-D2 and thus the future of the Republic. J-40 has three legs studded with knives at each joint, and a head covered in hundreds of eyes. 57-63 is a floating sphere that looks like a miniature version of the Death Star, and like the Death Star, he uses focused lasers to kill his prey.

Once Sam has the numbers etched in his mind, he goes to the guy he got the guns from and asks him how to get a counterfeit license plate.

“How would I know?” the guy says. “What do you think I am? A criminal?”

Sam hands him a hundred dollars.

“Eh, maybe I can help you.”

Unfortunately, Sam’s only detective experience was when he and Blaine exposed the Warblers for steroid use.  He asks way too many questions when he meets with the license plate guy and for a second he wonders if he’s going to have to use his gun – which he really doesn’t want to do, because five people saw him walk into this shop and it would be super suspicious if he was the only one who walked out.

So he never finds out how many fake license plates get made every year, or how many people make them, or where they’re made, or who bought the counterfeit copy of J40-5763.

And he loses two weeks’ salary in the process.

It’s never like this in the movies. Heroes don’t just keep chasing down rabbit holes in search of the bad guys. Every new idea, every new contact leads to some sort of breakthrough.

Of course, Bruce Wayne is a billionaire and has all the resources of Wayne Enterprises at his fingertips. Spiderman has superpowers. Luke Skywalker has Yoda and the Force.

Maybe that’s what Sam needs – the Force. It occurs to him that he forgot to pray about his license plate investigation before embarking on it. When he gets home that evening, he asks God to forgive him and promises to stay closer to Him next time.

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

Kurt starts going on more frequent patrols – not near the gay bar where he killed those two guys and stupidly let the other one go, because _that_ got all over the internet and no one will stop talking about the gay vigilante. He doubts any bashers will be popping their heads up in that neck of the woods anytime soon.

He goes walking around other gay bars, looking for a gray or blue pickup truck and waiting for something to happen.

He still gets hit on a lot. He still says he’s not interested.

Until now. Because the man who’s talking to him – there’s something strange about him, something too eager. He keeps looking directly into Kurt’s eyes, his eyes barely flitting down to check out the shape of his body beneath tight clothes. “You’re such a pretty little twink,” he says – and that on its surface isn’t weird, per se, but the way he says it _is_ – like when someone in Kurt’s acting workshop has learned all the lines and gets their intonation right and even cries on cue, but the soul of the monologue is missing.

Kurt’s pretending like he’s already half-drunk, which must be some of his allure. The guy has a friend with him, and they want to buy Kurt more drinks; they know this great place in the other direction, and _oh_ they could sure show him a good time.

So he follows them.

Maybe it’s stupid to go alone with someone he’s never fought before.  This is different from that time he found the three guys in an alley. He had no choice then. He has a choice right now. He could walk away.

But if not him, they would find someone else to go after. Wouldn’t they?

Besides, he has a knife strapped to each of his calves, and another in a holster by his left flank, and a collapsible baton under his jacket. He’s scouted out every alley for things that could be used as weapons.

So he goes.

*

Kurt doesn’t kill these guys. It’s not necessary – there’s no victim to protect, unless he counts himself. And he doesn’t. Sure, he can feel bruises blooming on his back and arms and calves, and he has a small cut on his left hand. Other than wishing he could delete his attackers’ Matthew Shepard jokes from his memory, Kurt’s not faring much worse than after a rough day at the dojo.

They look a lot worse than he does. He’s not sure if he’s actually stronger than them or even a better fighter. Maybe he only won because they didn't expect to have the living crap beat out of them by a twink.

He ties them both up before taking their phones out of their pockets with his gloved hands and posting their humiliation to the internet.

The next day, his calling card is a headline in the _New York Daily News:_ “This Is What Happens to Gay Bashers.”

* * *

Sam doesn’t usually read the _Daily News_ , but there’s no way he can miss it – people won’t stop talking about it on his superhero-themed chat rooms and Tumblr dash.

It comes to light that this is the second “bash back,” as the media are now calling it. _Gothamist_ reports that it received photos of a similar incident several weeks ago, but turned them over to the police for investigation since it involved homicide and it wasn’t clear at the time that the victims were also perpetrators.

The district attorney is now saying that all all targets of the bash backs have been connected to past hate crimes and are being arraigned on multiple charges. However, that does not absolve the vigilante of his own crimes. “We will not tolerate this kind of lawlessness in our city,” the _New York Post_ quotes him as saying.

A manip of Batman with a rainbow cape and pink triangle emblazoned on his chest gets thousands of notes on Tumblr within a few hours. “Not the hero Gotham deserves, but the hero Gotham needs!” is written in dramatic font across the top. It’s the phrase that keeps popping up all over social media – which really annoys Sam, because it kind of implies that New York City deserves gay bashings, but doesn’t deserve any relief from them.

Sam’s not sure what to think of it all. If it were a comic, it would be awesome.  But this is real life, and he’s worried – worried that Blaine will get ideas and don his Nightbird costume once again even though he would be _so bad_ at that kind of superhero work. Blaine’s the kind of guy who apologizes when he swats a mosquito.

His concerns about Blaine are unfounded. They stay up late in their room talking about it sometimes. And they have a lot of opportunities to stay up late talking, because Blaine hardly sleeps over at Kurt’s anymore – the whole vigilante thing seems to have triggered bad memories of his own assault, and he won’t even talk about it with Blaine now, keeps telling him he needs time alone to process. Well, that’s what Sam has gathered from the things Blaine has told him and from trying not to listen in on his best friend’s phone conversations.

“I’m worried about the precedent this whole thing sets,” Blaine says, setting his iPad down on his bed. They’d found a Gay Knight fanfiction by one of their favorite _Star Wars_ authors and had decided to give it a try, but Blaine hadn’t been able to continue reading out loud past the  second paragraph, which involved the brains of Rick Santorum leaking out onto a Manhattan sidewalk. “Superheroes are all fine and good in stories, but the way people are talking about this – this is dangerous. Our fandom friends are celebrating _murder_ , Sam.”

“Well, it’s not really murder when it’s in self-defense. It’s justifiable homicide.” Sam was grateful for all the episodes of _Law & Order _he used to watch with his mom.

“It’s still _killing._ Whoever’s doing this should call the police. They shouldn’t use force unless it’s absolutely necessary.”

“Maybe it’s necessary, though. Maybe with some people, the only way you can keep them from murdering and raping is to kill them. Maybe if you don’t, they’ll keep doing what they’ve always done. How is that fair?”

Blaine falls back against his pillows with a loud sigh. “I don’t like that. I don’t like the idea that there are people who can’t change for the better.”

“I know you don’t,” Sam says. “That’s why I like you.”

Blaine has a point. He really does.  Sam has seen the photos of the Gay Knight’s work, and they’re so brutal he’s not even sure how to describe them. They’re worse than anything he’s ever seen in a movie.

Sam often can’t tell who’s alive and who’s dead. If their eyes are open – if they still have both eyes – the spirit is gone from them. They look so much worse than Kurt did that night in the hospital.

Sam knows what the Gay Knight is doing isn’t wrong. The thugs he goes after love this kind of violence, feed on it. They don’t have any problems doing to other people what the Gay Knight has done to them.

But Sam is no longer sure he has the stomach to mete out that kind of justice, even if it is the right thing to do.

Still, he wonders – maybe if he can’t and the police won’t, maybe the Gay Knight can. Maybe the Gay Knight can find and stop the guys who hurt Kurt.

* * *

When he goes out, Kurt is careful to always wear gloves. In warmer weather, he pulls it off as affectation, something to distinguish himself from the rabble. Sometimes, when it gets too warm, he peels them off and tucks them in the pocket of his jeans like a kerchief.  But usually he keeps them on. He’s never been completely comfortable touching the city with his bare hands, anyway. The gloves allow him to touch without risk ­– without the risk of direct contact, without the risk of leaving fingerprints.

Even with the gloves on, he tries to avoid coming into to close contact with the thugs he battles. If they end up dying and get mistaken for victims, he doesn’t want to leave strands of hair or traces of blood on their bodies.  Even though the NYPD doesn’t have his DNA on file, it’s best not to take unnecessary risks.

And there’s the matter of everything being a little easier if he doesn’t end up with anyone’s blood on his own clothes. Even though he doesn’t have to worry about Rachel seeing him when he gets home – her performances keep her busy late into the night – the rest of New York is full of potential witnesses. So he fights with a makeshift bō when he can, his collapsible truncheon when that’s not an option. He keeps knives holstered to his body, but avoids using them. They add to the evidence trail.

Kurt sometimes reads about the Gay Knight on the internet, but mostly just to make sure no one’s on his trail. He doesn’t like looking at the pictures of the people he’s defeated – he knows it’s necessary to post them, that doing so is the only way to warn off thugs who get joy out of hurting people. But the thing about photographs is that they make a single moment in time last for an eternity, and Kurt doesn’t like that. Stopping these thugs entails making them suffer. But as much as he loathes them, he doesn’t want them to suffer for an eternity. And the photographs make him feel like they’re doing just that.

There are copycats now, although the police don’t seem to have figured that out. They suspect that all the Gay Knight actions have been done by an organized cell of co-conspirators. And maybe the copycats are conspiring – having planning meetings in basements and using codewords and pretending to be heroes and revolutionaries – a lot of annoying stuff that Kurt would never be able to tolerate. Maybe Cameron from the JCC is one of them; despite Kurt’s distaste for meetings of anarcho-syndicalists, the thought gives him a little swell of pride.

Kurt spends more time on the copycat reports than his own. He’s looking for two familiar faces among their prey: the two cowards from his first time in an alley, the same two cowards who killed Russ. Even with battered faces, he’ll know them when he sees them – he’s sure of it.

But they never show up.

Kurt and Blaine start fighting about how much time they’re spending together. Or, rather, _not_ spending together. They still share classes and study together and have date nights, but Blaine only sleeps over at the loft maybe once a week. Kurt says it’s because he needs the space – and yes, that’s technically true. He needs the space to go prowl the streets unquestioned. He still hasn’t found the guys who knocked him unconscious last winter, and he won’t settle down until he or the police do.

Kurt doesn’t believe in an afterlife. He only met Russ in person a couple of times, and barely remembers his face from those encounters and doesn’t remember his voice at all. The only reason he can still picture Russ is because of the vigil posters and that photo from the hospital that Kurt still keeps on his phone. 

And yet he feels like Russ’ ghost is haunting him, won’t leave him alone until the cowards who took his life are caught.

“Are you having doubts about us?” Blaine asks.

“No.” Kurt shakes his head. It’s the fifth or seventh or eleventh time they’ve had this argument, and it never ends well. Maybe if Kurt gets closer to telling the truth, the conversation can go better this time. “I just – I’m still processing what happened last winter. With the attacks.”

Blaine snaps. “Maybe if you didn’t go to the dojo so much, you could deal with your actual feelings!”

Kurt blinks. Sharp words are forming in his mind, but he doesn’t want to use them against Blaine. Blaine isn’t the one he’s angry with. Not really.

“I’m sorry,” Blaine says after an uncomfortable moment of silence stretches into a minute. “I shouldn’t have said that. After that thing that happened to me in high school … I practiced my boxing almost every day for two years. And I … I’m still not done dealing with it. I’m not sure I ever will be.” Blaine swallows heavily. “I guess that’s why it worries me. Because if you need to have space until you’ve dealt with it … I’m worried what that means for us.”

Kurt reaches for Blaine’s hand. It’s not a natural gesture for him when they’re tense, but he knows it helps Blaine – and because of that, it helps him, too. “I’m sorry, Blaine. I’m not trying to make this hard for you. But I just – I need time. So that when we move in together, I’m with you completely.”

Blaine scrunches his eyebrows in surprise. “You still want to live with me?”

“Of course I do. I want to _marry_ you even more. I’m just not ready yet.”

“Okay.” Blaine’s eyes glisten.

“Okay,” says Kurt – and for no good reason, Kurt lets himself hope that it will be. Maybe not today, or tomorrow. But soon.

* * *

Sam’s modeling work isn’t steady, so he builds his daily routine around finding everything he can about the Gay Knight. He starts each morning on Tumblr, then checks Gothamist.com and the _Daily News_ and _Post_ sites for the official stories. He has to be careful about what he reads, though. He’s given up on the fanfiction because he was getting the made-up stuff confused with what he’d seen in the news. And he’s had to unfollow a few of the fanartists who seem to get off on drawing each trophy photo in gory detail.

The bash backs continue off-and-on, although not allof them are gay-related now. There are reports of people interfering in rapes and armed robberies, attacks against transgender women, rescuing prostitutes from corrupt pimps. Some of the work is clearly done by copycats: There was a group of people who went around in superhero costumes for a few weeks beating up corrupt landlords in broad daylight, and a couple folks who used their own phones to upload photos of the thugs they’d beaten up – which, dude, even Sam knows not to do that if you’re trying to escape detection.

Sam knows those people aren’t the real Gay Knight, because every superhero has their own style, and those actions just don’t fit in with the way the Gay Knight operates. (Okay, and maybe the Gay Knight isn’t technically a superhero, but Sam’s pretty sure the rule sticks, anyway.)

Sam thinks he’s figured out the Gay Knight’s M.O. His showdowns usually happen in neighborhoods around gay bars, but rarely in the same neighborhood twice. He uses makeshift weapons like pipes, chairs and broom handles, and tends to bludgeon people instead of punching, kicking or stabbing them. He never uses _actual_ weapons: even when the thugs he’s after have guns, he doesn’t use them himself; and though he’s disarmed a few of them and had the chance to use their own firearms against them, he hasn’t.

Sometimes Sam thinks it would be more merciful to shoot these guys, the way that Sam shot the rats. But maybe the Gay Knight doesn’t want to show mercy. Or maybe he’s a bad shot and doesn’t want to make the thugs suffer the way that Sam’s first few prey would have if his father hadn’t been right beside him to finish the kill.

Sam starts hanging out near gay bars on nights that Mercedes isn’t home. He feels a little guilty for not inviting Blaine along, because _gay bars_ , but Sam is on business. He’s looking for the Gay Knight, although he’s not sure how he’s going to recognize him when he sees him.

 _All you know about him is that he never strikes in the same place twice and he probably doesn’t carry a gun._ Maybe he should watch out for someone walking around with a big piece of pipe or a broken chair? Sam sighs heavily. Stakeouts are tough when you don’t know who you’re staking out.

But if Sam doesn’t know what the Gay Knight looks like, he does know what he needs to say to him: “My best friend’s fiancé was bashed, and this guy who was going to become my other best friend was murdered. I don’t think the police are ever going to do anything about it, and I want to help but I don’t know how to find the guys who did it and I think I’m probably not brave enough to do what needs to be done, anyway. I need help.”

And so Sam walks around night after night, gun strapped like a useless weight against his ribcage, looking for the man who can help him.

It doesn’t occur to Sam for a few weeks that the Gay Knight may already have dealt justice to Kurt’s attackers. It happens one afternoon when Kurt is over at Mercedes’ house to study with Blaine. Sam looks up from his Tumblr and blurts out, “Do you think your attackers are dead?”

Blaine and Kurt are at the dining table; Blaine gives Sam a warning look tinged with anxiety.

“Sorry,” Sam says. “I wasn’t thinking. I was just reading about the Gay Knight, and –”

“Can we not talk about the Gay Knight?” Blaine says. “Or – or what happened?”

Kurt rolls his eyes. “I’m not a china doll. I’m not going to break.” The worry doesn’t leave Blaine’s eyes; Kurt either doesn’t notice the worry, or he’s trying to prove to Blaine that it’s pointless, because he continues. “Anyway,” he sighs, “they’re still out there.”

“How do you know?” Sam says.

Kurt doesn’t exactly smile, but something about his expression looks smug. “Even if I can’t describe those cowards to the police, I know what they look like. And I’ve looked at the photos he’s posted to the Internet. They don’t match.”

Blaine’s jaw drops “Kurt! You shouldn’t be looking at those pictures. They could trigger you.”

“I’m not going to get triggered looking at the pictures of some assholes who’ve been taught a lesson. I could look at hundreds of them and it will never upset me as much as seeing a picture of Russ when he was still alive. I’m sorry if that makes me a monster. But it’s true.” Kurt doesn’t smile when he says it, but he doesn’t look upset about it, either. There’s that old familiar righteous anger of his rippling right beneath the surface.

“Kurt –” Blaine reaches for Kurt’s hand, but Kurt moves away. “That doesn’t make you a monster.” Blaine’s not crying, but his eyes are all wet, like he wishes he could.

Kurt’s face softens, but the anger Sam saw just then – he wonders about it for the rest of the day and well into evening.

He wonders if the Gay Knight has that same kind of anger. He wonders if that’s what gives him the guts to do what needs to be done.

He wonders if the Gay Knight was hurt the same way that Kurt was.

* * *

Kurt’s not sure how many people he’s killed. Death is a side effect of his work; it’s not his aim. He doesn’t check pulses before leaving the scene, and he doesn’t comb the NYPD’s weekly statistics reports to find out whether the bodies they found were alive or dead. If they survive, he figures they’ve learned their lesson.

An incident in autumn proves him wrong. He’s had to return to a neighborhood where he’s fought before. He’s heard rumors of continued problems here that the police are overlooking: targeted beatings of male prostitutes that the cops dismiss as simple misunderstandings over the boundaries of S&M.

It’s close to 2 a.m. and the streets are asleep when Kurt hears shrill, panicked appeals from behind a closed gas station. “No, I don’t, that’s not, _no_ –” – tight half-phrases escaping between blows. The voice sounds young – much too young for this part of New York City at 2 a.m., younger than even his own voice sounded for years.

Kurt doesn’t dwell on that, though. He goes into action, backtracking half a block to grab a broom that someone left leaning against a shop grate. He snaps the broomhead off with a swift whack against his thigh before moving toward the noise with deliberate slowness. He’s found this to be the best approach – it allows him to listen for clues, for his eyes to adjust to the dark places that seem to attract violence.

Kurt pulls two matching kerchiefs out of his back pocket as he approaches the gas station, tying one over the lower half of his face and the other over his hair. The young voice is crying now, and an older voice grunting and swearing, “You think you have a choice, faggot? You’re a sick little cunt and I’ll do what I want with you.” Kurt spins the broomstick in his hands, letting his body adapt to its weight and speed before turning the corner.

The boy. Despite the blood dripping down over the boy’s ear and down his jaw, Kurt recognizes him – Kurt has broken his rule of avoiding conversation on patrol a few times to talk to him. An obvious runaway, he couldn’t be older than 15 – the boy is thin, but his face is even softer and rounder than Kurt’s own had been at 14, although the few times Kurt has spoken to him and tried to refer him to LGBT youth services, he insisted he was 19 and had an apartment in Greenwich Village with his wealthy boyfriend. “Angel” – that’s what the kid said his name was, which Kurt had immediately called him out on as a lie. “You stole that from _Rent_ ,” Kurt said, and the boy didn’t deny it. But he didn’t admit it, either.

The man pinning Angel to the wall is twice his width and two heads taller. He’s heavy and brutish, holding the neck of a broken bottle in his hand despite his clear advantage over the boy. The man’s hand and arm are wrapped in a cast, but he has absolute control over his fingers, hovering the jagged glass close to Angel’s neck. “It’s your fault, bitch. You can’t go around in those tight little pants fucking everything that’s got a cock and not expect this to happen to you.”

Kurt recognizes the voice. He recognizes the outline of the face, too. He never forgets the face of someone he’s fought.

It’s the man from Kurt’s first patrol fight – the one he’d let live because he was in no shape to defend himself, the one the medics put into the ambulance first.

The man Kurt should have killed.

The broomstick isn’t as heavy as Kurt would like. But it will do.

Kurt swings the stick at the back of the thug’s head and doesn’t stop when he makes contact, keeps swinging until the man’s forehead crashes into the wall with a loud crunch. The man’s body slumps then. Angel twists to shake the body off of him. The broken bottle falls to the ground with a crash.

The body begins to fall backward, lacking aim or control. It’s clearly unconscious. Usually, that’s more than enough for Kurt to stop.

Kurt doesn’t stop. He whacks at the body as it falls: the back of the kidneys, the small of the spine, the side of the neck. It hits the ground and Kurt keeps at it, focusing on the head, listening to the satisfying _crack_ of wood against barely cushioned skull, listening for the even more satisfying sound of bone breaking, watching for the skull to dent in.

Kurt hits and hits and there is blood now – just the slightest hints of it, thin rivulets curling from an ear and a newly gaping wound on the man’s scalp. There is blood, but not nearly enough.

“What – what – oh god oh god oh god.” Angel’s voice, sharp and high and panicked, breaks through Kurt’s steady rhythm.

Kurt looks up, suddenly conscious of his own body – the way the sweat makes his clothes cling to his skin, the slipperiness of his palms against the insides of his leather gloves, the air stabbing sharp into his lung with each inhalation. He sees Angel’s eyes, wide and unbelieving.

Everything feels suddenly cold.

The boy’s face is shining in the dim dark, tears streaming down over his chin and his exposed neck. “I thought – I thought I was gonna die,” he sobs.

“You won’t,” Kurt said. “Not tonight.”

Angel stares at the body, at the stick in Kurt’s hand. There is trepidation all over his face, and horror, and even though Kurt knows he’s doing the right thing, he can’t be certain that Angel feels the same way.

“Do you know him?” Kurt says.

Angel shook his head. “No. He offered me money. For – you know. But that’s not what he wanted.”

Kurt crouches close to the body and pokes it with the end of the broomstick. It gives no response. But it’s still alive. Kurt can hear the slightest bit of air leaking from its nose.

Kurt looks up at Angel. “This man has hurt people before. I can’t let him do that again. You understand?”

Angel nods and wipes the back of his wrist across his cheek. “You’re the Gay Knight, aren’t you?”

Kurt shakes his head. “There’s no such thing.”

“But –”

“Do you have a place to go? A place where you’re safe?”

“I have a couple of friends.”

Kurt checks his gloves for blood and, seeing none, takes two twenties out of his pocket and hands them to the boy. “Go there. I need to finish.”

The boy stares at Kurt, as if uncertain what to do.

“Seriously. Get out of here. Unless you’re waiting for the police to show up?”

That’s enough to make Angel spin on his heels and disappear.

Kurt steps over toward the wall and picks up the broken bottle neck. It only seems right that this man should die the way he would have killed Angel.

Kurt holds a pizza box as a shield between himself and the body. He thrusts the jagged glass into the side of the rapist’s neck and pulls, watching the blood spurt fast onto the ground beneath. He wonders if he should feel some strong emotion: Regret. Anxiety. Triumph. Pride in a job well done.

But all he feels is tired.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

Sam’s been looking for the Gay Knight for weeks with no results. He’s gotten really good at learning how to turn down nice men without making it seem personal, and he’s also learned not to stand in any one place for too long unless you want the cops to think that you’re a prostitute. And he’s made a few sort-of friends with the guys he’s seen again and again in the same places – because maybe they’re out patrolling, like he is. He’s tried ferreting out the Gay Knight in conversations with them, but it hasn’t ended in any good leads – maybe because he was out sick the week that the Secret Society of Superheroes had its meeting on subtle interrogation techniques.

Sam’s in a new neighborhood tonight, and he hasn’t recognized anyone yet. He’s getting bored; he knows he shouldn’t listen to podfic when he’s on duty, but if he doesn’t, he’s probably going to fall asleep while walking despite the late-fall chill in the air – and that would be worse.

So he pulls off a glove and stops in front of a bodega to get out his earphones and select from the list of the _Star Wars_ fics on his phone. It takes him a while to decide on the right story – it’s got to be interesting, but not so suspenseful that he forgets where he is or what he’s supposed to be doing. He settles on an R2-D2/C-3PO domestic fic that’s one of Blaine’s favorites.

He’s about to turn it on when the bodega door swings open and out steps a guy in a jean jacket, a large purple flower embroidered on its back and the word “Pansy” scrolled above it in bright sequined letters. He holds the door open for an old lady exiting the store behind him and once she’s through, he lets it swing closed and turns in Sam’s direction.

Sam recognizes the face underneath the pink headscarf. “Kurt!”

Kurt looks at Sam, startled and almost scared-looking for a second before he recovers and lets out a small smile. “Sam,” he says. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I’m just … out for a walk.”

“Oh?” Kurt raises an eyebrow. “But … you don’t live anywhere near here.”

“Yeah, I know. I like to explore the city. Get on the subway and find a new part of town to walk around.”

“In the gay district at 10 o’clock at night?”

Sam looks around like he just noticed where he is. “Is this a gay neighborhood?”

“Sort of,” Kurt says. “There are five gay bars in a two-block radius from here.”

“Oh,” Sam says. “Blaine’s never mentioned any of them.”

“That’s because he’s never _been_ to any of them.”

Sam is not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s not the dullest either. He suddenly feels very uncomfortable. “You’re not …  Are you going to them with somebody else?”

“No! Just …”  All the muscles around Kurt’s nose and mouth are squinched up like there’s some horrible taste in his mouth that he just can’t get out – like Blaine made that one time when he thought the bottle of pink stuff Sam left out the counter was raspberry syrup for the Soda Stream and it turned out to be dish soap. “I’ve never been to any of them either.  I just know where they are. I have a few classmates in this neighborhood and I pass by them when we do our study groups together. I’m just – That’s why I’m here. I just finished my study group, and I had a hankering for cookies, so –” He lifts a snack bag of Chips Ahoy to his face and shakes it before shoving it in his pocket.

“Are you alone?”

“I’m _not_ cheating on Blaine, if that’s what you’re trying to imply.”

“No!” Sam says. Despite his earlier fleeting suspicion, Kurt doesn’t really strike Sam as the cheating kind. His personal space is so important to him that he barely has room for one relationship, let alone two. “I just – you shouldn’t walk home by yourself.”

“I’ve done it before with enormous success.”

“Yeah, except –” Even though Blaine is nowhere near them, Sam can feel his warning glare so strongly that he stops himself from saying, _except for that one time._ Instead he says, “I know. I just – I’m bored and could use the company, okay?”

Kurt eyes him suspiciously. “I can take care of myself. I know bōjutsu.”

“Of course you can.” _And of course Blaine would freak if he found out I saw you walking out late at night by yourself and I didn’t go with you._ “And I really _am_ bored. I mean, look –“ Sam holds up his phone to Kurt. “I’m so bored that I was going to listen to that fanfic where C-3PO finds out that Anakin poops midi-chlorians.”

“That’s Blaine’s  favorite,” Kurt says.

“Yeah. I’m not saying it’s bad, I’m just saying that I’ve listened to it 100 times already. Let me walk with you?” Sam shoves the phone in his pocket and pulls his glove back on.

Kurt hesitates, scans the street like he’s worried he’s leaving something behind. “Sure, fine. Whatever.”

They haven’t gotten more than four blocks when Kurt stops suddenly – so suddenly that Sam walks past him for several steps before he realizes that Kurt’s no longer by his side. Sam turns around. “Hey, Kurt, are you –?” He stops talking when he sees Kurt’s face.

Kurt looks like a ghost. He doesn’t look like he’s breathing, and his skin is so pale in the street lights that Sam has the urge to reach out and see if it’s really even there. “Kurt?”

Kurt doesn’t answer. His eyes are fixed on something in the distance. Sam turns to see what it might be. He spots two guys laughing under the awning of a tavern – one tall and brawny with a goatee on his chin, the other shorter and skinnier with a beakish nose.

Sam walks back to Kurt, nudges him on the elbow, and Kurt’s arm flinches but the rest of him remains still. “Kurt, are you okay? Do you know those guys?”

Kurt doesn’t blink or nod. He doesn’t move his head in Sam’s direction. He’s like Han Solo frozen in carbonite – except for his mouth, which finally moves. “I’m fine. I just – I changed my mind. I’d rather walk home alone.”

“I’m not leaving you by yourself,” Sam says.

“You should,” Kurt says calmly. He turns around then and walks toward the edge of the sidewalk, wrapping his hand around the post of a No Parking sign as if testing it for strength. “Please go, Sam.”

The men under the awning are looking their way now, their eyes focusing on the glittery letters on Kurt’s back. They murmur something to each other, laugh, and start to walk in their direction. “No.” Sam shakes his head and pats the holster under his jacket. “I have a gun. I can protect you.”

Kurt goes wide-eyed. “Are you insane?” he’s whispering, but his tone comes across as yelling. “Walking around the city with a firearm? You could get –” He cuts himself off as the two men approach.

“Hey,” the bird-beaked one says, pulling a cigarette out from the pack in his front pocket and nodding at Kurt. “I like your jacket. You got a light?”

Kurt is still holding onto the street sign with one hand. “No. Don’t smoke. Sorry.”

Bird Face laughs, steps closer to Kurt. Kurt doesn’t back away. “That’s too bad.” He throws an arm over Kurt’s shoulder. “Guess you’ll have to give me all your money then.”

“Hey!” Sam shouts, lunging toward Bird Face, but he’s stopped by goatee man’s arms tight around him.

“Calm the fuck down, dude,” goatee man says, pressing something solid and cold to the small of his back. _A gun_. _Is it a gun? And mine –_ Sam’s arms are pinned to his sides. He can’t get to his. “We’re not gonna hurt your girlfriend. We’re just gonna take a nice walk to the ATM machine and you’ll both make a little withdrawal for us, okay? Just don’t make any noise and we’ll all be fine.”

Sam feels like he’s going to vomit. So much for helping Kurt get home safely. He looks up at Kurt to apologize, but before he can say anything, Kurt smiles at him. “It’s okay, Sam. We’re going to do what these gentlemen tell us, and then we’ll be fine.”

Kurt sounds so certain – so _calm_ – that Sam doesn’t question it. He lets the goatee man keep his arm around his shoulders and guide him along the sidewalk. Bird Face is in front of him, pushing Kurt along in the same way. To someone who didn’t know any better, they must look like four drunk buddies out on the town. Sam’s stomach clenches again.

They haven’t gone a block when Bird Face makes a sharp turn, pulling Kurt into a narrow alley between a hardware store and abandoned hair salon. Sam’s stomach clenches tighter. He may not be familiar with this neighborhood, but he knows that no bank is stupid enough to put an outdoor  teller machine where it doesn’t face the sidewalk. “Kurt, don’t!” Sam calls out. “That’s not the way to the ATM!”

But it’s too late. Sam feels himself flying sideways into the darkness, his shoulder hitting something solid and metal as he crashes to the ground. Goatee man laughs, swooping in and striking Sam hard across the jaw.

“What are you doing?” Sam shouts through the pain. “We were cooperating!” He tries to pull himself up, but goatee man has him pinned down by the knees.

“Stupid faggots think you can buy everyone off. I’ll show you who owns this town.” Goatee man pulls back his fist to strike again. Sam doesn’t have enough time to duck, so instead he leans away from the punch to lessen the weight of the blow. His jaw is buzzing now, his teeth aching to the roots.

A scream echoes through the alley, low and agonized. Sam thinks it’s his own at first, but then there’s a cracking blow and another guttural cry even though his own mouth isn’t moving at all, and he realizes – Kurt.

He has to help Kurt.

Sam’s not sure how he flings his own assailant off, but he does. He couldn’t do it when he was worried only about himself, but when he remembered Kurt, it became easy. Goatee man is kneeling on the ground now, his whole body shaking because Sam is on his feet with the barrel of his gun pressed to the man’s head. “Let Kurt go or I’ll shoot!”

Goatee man doesn’t say anything. He just stares with wide, terrorized eyes toward the moans coming from a few feet away.

 _Oh God, please don’t let it be too late, please God, please let Kurt live, please –_ Sam looks over his shoulder despite being afraid of what he’ll find, what he might have to explain to Blaine in the early hours of the morning.

But it’s not – it’s not what Sam expected. It’s Bird Face who is curled up on the ground, crying in agony. And it’s Kurt who is still on both feet. He wields a baton high over his head before whipping it down in one swift stroke onto the crying man’s skull.

The crying stops.

“Oh god please, please don’t, we were just going to rough you up a little, we didn’t mean –” Goatee man is sobbing, snot pouring out of his nose and into his mustache. Sam gets that sick feeling he got when he shot his first rat, when he’d only wounded it and it tried to scramble away on the concrete basement floor.

Kurt steps over toward them, stops two feet in front of the goateed man. “Look at me.”

The man doesn’t move.

“Look at me!” Kurt doesn’t wait for a response this time, just reaches for the guy’s hair and yanks up until they’re eye-to-eye.

“Kurt –” Sam says, because everything is getting weird, and they need to figure out what to do, there’s a guy lying unconscious next to them and the one that Sam’s got a gun pointed at may have his own gun and Kurt is acting really weird, like this is all part of a normal evening and –

_Oh. Kurt is the Gay Knight._

Kurt ignores Sam’s voice, keeps his eyes on the goateed man. “Do you remember me?”

The man shakes his head. “I’ve …. No.”

“Are you sure?”

The man nods slowly. “I swear, we’ve never done anything like this before. It was just – we’re broke is all.”

Kurt sighs, pats his gloved hand on the top of the man’s head. “If you were broke, you would have taken us to the ATM instead of shoving us in an alley and calling us ‘fags.’”

The man’s voice is trembling. “I – I’m sorry. That was – I shouldn’t have said that. But really, there’s an ATM that way –” The man nods his head backward and Sam turns to follow the line of direction.

And that’s when Sam notices it – the metal thing he flew into when he was thrown into the alley. It’s the front of a pickup truck. A pickup truck like the one that Russ’ attackers jumped out of. Like the one that Kurt saw in the alley the night he was attacked.

Sam squints at the license plate, but with the darkness, it’s harder than usual to read them. He catches a “J,” an “O” or a “0,” an “S” or a “5,” and a “3,” but it’s all so jumbled. He blinks and tries again, and suddenly images of a three-legged assassin droid and a floating sphere of death float into his consciousness: J-40 and 57-63.

It’s the counterfeit license plate.

These are the men who killed Russ.

“Kurt,” Sam starts again. “He’s lying.”

Kurt nods calmly. “I know. I was just hoping –” He turns and looks back down at the goateed man. “You leave someone unconscious in an alley and you don’t even remember their face?”

“I don’t know what you’re –” the man starts, but when Sam clicks off the safety he falls silent.

“Last winter? Two weeks after you put Russ into a coma? You were beating on an Asian guy in an alley near Bijan’s and I called you a coward. You thought that was funny.”

The man goes wide-eyed. “No, no, that was a misunderstanding. He’s our friend. We were just fooling around –”

“Which is why you put me in a hospital.”

“Please. I’ll do anything. You can have my money. Just, just let me get my wallet –”

Everything goes too fast then. The man reaching for his pocket, a swift kick from Kurt’s boot, Sam trying to keep his aim true but both of them keep moving, too close together, and then the flash of metal – a revolver, is it a revolver? – in the man’s hand.

Sam aims over the both of their heads and shoots into the brick above them. The noise is enough to make them falter; Kurt is the first to recover, delivering a quick kick to man’s chest and toppling him over. The revolver – it _is_ a revolver – drops and skitters across the ground toward Sam’s feet.

Kurt’s on top of the man now, his truncheon at the ready. “I remember the face of every man I’ve ever killed and the ones who only looked like they were dead, too. I remember even though they deserved what they got. But you – you think we’re such scum that you don’t even bother to remember what we look like. What’s _wrong_ with you?” There are tears streaming down Kurt’s face; he snaps back his hand and strikes the thug’s head.

The crunch is deafening.

Nothing happens for a moment, and then blood begins to pour out of the man’s ear and onto the pavement. His body starts jerking and shaking; saliva foams out of his mouth and his eyes roll backward and the smell of piss and shit fill the air. Kurt jumps back, lifts the truncheon again –

“No!” Sam calls out. “Don’t!”

Kurt looks up. He’s sobbing now, pink and shaking. “I used to think everyone could change for the better too, Sam. I really did. But some people just don’t. And it’s not fair to let them live just so they can keep hurting people.”

“I know,” Sam says, nodding slowly. “I just –” He clicks the safety of his pistol on and slides it back into its holster. He picks the revolver up off the ground and checks its chambers. It’s full. “I just thought – maybe we don’t have to make him suffer as much as he deserves. We can make it easier on all of us.”

Kurt looks at the revolver and understanding flickers across his face. “Are you sure, Sam? I’m used to this.”

“I’m sure.” Sam crouches over the seizing man and Kurt steps back farther into the alley, away from the line of fire.

It’s been a while since Sam’s shot a revolver, but the principle’s the same.

Load.

Aim.

Safety.

Pray: _Dear God, Your Son taught us to do to our neighbor what he would have done to us. God, if I were this man, I would want a quick death. Help me to make that happen._

Shoot.

Blood sprays out of the opposite side of the head. The body goes still.

_Thank you, God._

Sam stands up, carries the revolver over to the other body, wraps its hand around the grip and trigger. He stands up and walks toward Kurt, who’s wiping his face on the back of his sleeve. “Are you okay?” Sam says.

“It’s the first time I’ve cried.”

“You – you’re him, aren’t you? The Gay Knight?”

Kurt grimaces. “I always hated that name.”

Sam looks down at his feet. “Should we – Are we supposed to take pictures now?” He doesn’t really want to revisit the scene behind them, but he will if he has to.

Kurt shakes his head. “No. The gunshots – the police might show up. We should go.” He removes the handkerchief from his hair and wipes down the truncheon before collapsing it and tucking it inside his jacket, then leads Sam through the back of the alley toward a new street.

* * *

Kurt would prefer to be alone, but he feels a sense of responsibility for Sam. So he takes him back to the loft and shows him how to inspect his clothing for evidence and how to clean his gloves. He reminds Sam to shower – the look Sam gives him suggests that the reminder is entirely unnecessary – and when they’re both done with cleanup, he gets out a bag of frozen peas to for Sam to hold against his swelling jaw. Sam sits at the kitchen table with the bag pressed against his face as Kurt sets about the stove to heat up some milk.

“Are you going to tell Blaine?” Kurt asks nervously, not looking up from the stove.

Sam doesn’t answer for a minute, and Kurt starts to worry that maybe the boy has an undiagnosed concussion that caused him to forget the question. Kurt turns from the pot he’s stirring, “Sam?”

Sam nods thoughtfully. “I was just thinking that I wouldn’t even know what to say. I don’t – I don’t think he’d like the part about the gun.”

Kurt turns off the stove, pours the milk into two mugs and sets them on the table. “I think that would be only one of a long list of things he didn’t like.” Kurt settles in his chair, realizes for the first time this evening that his thighs and arms are sore.

“He worries about you,” Sam says.

“I know.”

Sam clears his throat. “I don’t want you to get hurt, either. You’re family.”

Kurt feels like he might start crying for the second time tonight. Instead, he takes a deep breath and sips his warm milk. “Sam,” he says as he sets his mug back down. “How long have you been carrying that gun?”

“I got it after Russ died.” Sam adjusts the bag of peas higher up on his jaw. “I – I wanted to find the guys who did that to him and to you.”

“But – but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would you put yourself in that kind of danger?”

“I told you already. You’re my family.” The look on Sam’s face is more sad than exasperated. “We both lost a brother. I didn’t want to lose you, too.”

The tears come too hard for Kurt to stop them. They slip out of his eyes, and he feels like he’s slipping, too, falling down fast into a bottomless pit that he’ll never be able to get out of. He hears Sam’s chair creaking across the kitchen floor but can’t open his eyes to look.

“Hey.” It’s Sam’s voice next to him, Sam’s hand on his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do?”

Kurt finds himself rising out off the chair to pull Sam to him. He can’t remember ever hugging Sam before, but he needs to now. Kurt holds on so he doesn’t slip too far.

And Sam holds him back, solid and steady, refusing to let him fall.

Kurt cries himself out on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m not going to go out anymore,” he says when he finally regains his breath. “I’ve done what I set out to do.”

Sam steps back, and they both sink into their chairs. Their milk has gone tepid, but they continue to drink it anyway. “I think,” Sam says, “the same goes for me, too.”

* * *

Sam texts Blaine that he rented one of those CitiBikes and crashed it in Bushwick so he’s staying the night at Kurt and Rachel’s while he recovers from his bruises. Blaine sends a sympathetic text and a link to a brand new _Star Wars_ podfic in case Sam has trouble getting to sleep.

* * *

It’s the second weekend of April. Kurt has washed and donated the collection of handkerchiefs and gloves he used in the line of duty, and some of the clothes as well.

His life feels lighter now. Blaine sleeps over a few times a week, and Kurt lets him make breakfast in bed to his heart’s content. Maybe it’s not so bad to let someone take care of you from time to time, Kurt thinks, even when you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself.

Kurt sleeps in late and wakes to a tray full of pancakes and daffodils beside him. But more than the flowers, the thing that makes Kurt’s heart flutter is seeing Blaine smiling unabashedly at him, without a hint of reserve or worry. Kurt had almost forgotten what that smile looked like while he was on patrol. He feels beyond lucky to have it back now.

They eat and kiss and read _The New York Times_ until one o’clock, when Kurt insists that they need to finally get out of bed or they’ll feel like moss-covered sloths by evening. “Besides!” Kurt exclaims. “There’s something I want to show you.”

He doesn’t tell Blaine where they’re going. Kurt himself hasn’t been here since his first spring in New York with Rachel – he was too distracted last spring to notice the passing of the season, much less to celebrate it.

But when they walk through the gates of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, it’s as beautiful as Kurt remembers it – cherry trees in bloom everywhere, the soft petals floating like snow across the paths with each breeze, and the scent of them everywhere, sweet like pears and roses. It’s more beautiful, really, because Blaine is beside him, squeezing his hand and eyes wide like he’s viewing something miraculous.

Maybe it is.

“Blaine,” Kurt says, turning toward his fiance and fingering the engagement ring Blaine gave him two springs ago. “I’ve been thinking.”

Blaine turns his face from the canopy above them and looks at Kurt with a soft smile. “About what?”

Kurt bites his lower lip and reaches into his pocket, pulling out a simple platinum ring. “I’m not as good at speeches as you, but –”

Blaine’s eyes are on the ring, shocked and slowly blinking. “Kurt.” The syllable sounds so reverent when he says it, so full of love and awe.

“I want to find a place with you, Blaine. I want to start our life together. I want to marry you. Will you –” The tears start, springing from fear and need and hope – but mostly love, so much love that it makes Kurt feel like he’ll burst with it. “Will you make a life with me, Blaine Anderson?”

“Kurt,” Blaine says again – laughing almost, and crying too, and pulling Kurt to him with warm arms. “Of course I will. Always.”


End file.
